Act II, Scene IV

by The Last Letter

Jake is better, really, everyone agrees. Even if the Homecoming dance is a brick on his chest he'll never be free of, even if he's a little haunted, even if he's still waiting for Rose and their one last dance.

Happy birthday, Caroline!

HKL is not canon in this one. The song is Last Dance by Camera Can't Lie.

Warnings: light swears; allusions to underage drinking (none actually happens)

Act I

Jake fought to not look miserable. And, he wasn't, really. This was supposed to be a fun night. It was their first high school Homecoming and he, Spud, and Trixie had decided to go stag together, not worrying about dates or even dressing up all that much. It wasn't as cool to dress to the nines for homecoming first year of high school as it was for the last year of middle school. Besides, Jake had tried on his suit from last year and it didn't fit anymore.

Jake heard voices from downstairs and he knew that Trixie and Spud had arrived to pick him up. Jake shut his closet door on his suit and the memories that haunted it and thundered down the steps to greet his friends, smiling like there was nothing wrong at all. It wouldn't have fooled anyone normally but his friends were set on having a good night tonight and his mom wanted to believe his was healing and his dad, taking rapid fire pictures to capture every moment, didn't realize that there was anything wrong at all.

Jake shrugged his black leather jacket over his shoulders, thinking of the red one upstairs that he had outgrown this past Christmas too. A year was nothing but, at the same time, it had turned out to be everything. Jake hardly recognized the boy in the mirror anymore because he was slowly turning into a man.

Jake turned to his friends. "Should we go?"

"Hold on, Jakey, we don't have nearly enough pictures and your friends are in such outfits!"

Only Jonathan could say that with such enthusiasm. Jake had given up the pretense of caring what people thought because the person that mattered most couldn't have thought of him even if she had wanted to. Trixie and Spud had fully accepted that they were never going to be the popular kids when they'd snuck into Stacey Wintergrin's end of summer party and worse than middle school when people turned up their noses and demanded to know why the trio was there, they were all fully and completely ignored. So, here they all were embracing their inner selves. Jake's inner selves had turned dark and his wardrobe had slowly turned all black, leaving Trixie to tease him about guyliner and wondering if she should start painting his nails for him – Jake was on the verge of letting her. Trixie and Spud compensated for his lack of colour. For homecoming, they'd dressed each other up. Spud was in a loud, poofy skirt and a blouse that looked like it had been the subject of a failed art project involving neon paint while Trixie was outfitted in a lime green tux and combat boots.

Jake was jealous of the combat boots.

Jake hadn't become enough of an ass to completely blow off his father and Jake also really did not want to go to this dance. So, he let Jonathan pose them until Spud and Trixie got annoyed at his family for him.

"We gotta go, Mr. L or we're gonna miss all the best parts!"

"See ya soon!"

Then, they were out the door and Jake was packed into a taxi, taking them to whatever venue this dance was being held in. Jake hadn't even planned on going; he hadn't bought a ticket and had breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that they were sold out. Every time he heard the word Homecoming, he would feel this pain that started in his chest and then slowly spread out, going for his fingers and his toes and his head. Then, it would wrap around his lungs, making it so that he couldn't draw a breath and then his vision would start to go dark and all he could see was Rose and he felt like he was going to go insane and he couldn't wait for this stupid dance to be over. The Halloween dance Jake could probably handle talking about. So, of course, his friends in what they believed was an act of love and Jake believed was an act of terrorism had gotten all three of them Homecoming dance tickets because 'they couldn't miss the party'.

Now, here he was, pretending like he wasn't scanning the crowd, waiting to see blonde hair and that smile that was just for him. He was drinking punch and trying to put some effort into dancing with his friends, even though he couldn't quite summon the Jake that they were expecting.

"Jakey," Trixie said, pulling him to the side, "come on. We're here. Let's have fun!"

But Jake couldn't figure out how to have fun when his chest was caving in and he couldn't breathe. He fled, aiming for the men's washroom but the second he cracked the door he was overwhelmed with the smell of people smoking weed and trying to avoid the chaperones. Jake veered, just thinking about away, away, away. He found himself fleeing to the stairwell, away from the swell of voices below him, but he should have thought better when he used his dragon strength to break through the door at the top, and he found himself on the roof.

The night sky was oppressive and the stars were going to tear him apart. Jake hid in the corner of the roof and let himself fall to his knees, desperately trying to breathe. It shouldn't be like this and he knew that it shouldn't be like this. He didn't fail. Rose was alive out there, somewhere, happy in the life that she should have had all along. There wasn't even the whisper of the Huntsclan's memory to disturb her. And he knew that as solid fact. He had seen her on the sidewalk, outside of their middle school, the day that she had moved with her family to China. She had smiled at him and looked at him and there was nothing in the way that she met his gaze that was more than polite conversation with a random conversation. She had moved on and Jake felt like he had never gotten up.

"Jake! Geez." Panting, Spud collapsed down next to him. "What gives? Why'd you run off?"

Jake cleared Spud's skirts off his legs and curled his knees into his chest. "I don't want to be here. Not really in a dancing mood. Or party mood. Or whatever mood you and Trixie and everyone else is in."

"Why? Are you sick or something?"

Jake nodded. Sick and drowning and screaming but he didn't know how to say that without being insane about someone he'd loved in middle school and had let go of so she could be out there having a better life. Maybe if Rose had died then it would make more sense to feel this upside down and inside out. If Rose had died, maybe then other people wouldn't be expecting him to be the Jake he was when she had loved him.

"Oh, is it because it's Homecoming?"

Jake hid his face away. It was a blessing and a curse that Spud knew him so well.

"Dude, we thought it might be better for you to be out and not hiding in your room. You know, face it and all that."

Jake faced it every night in his dreams, winding his way through the memories to see if he could have done it different or better but there was no way to do that. He couldn't save the girl and love the girl. Doing the right thing had never felt so wrong.

"You never talk about her or last year's Homecoming," Spud added. "Trixie and I thought this might help you shake it loose or open up to us or … Listen, if we made a mistake, if we guessed wrong, we'll go, right now. Wanna hit up a movie or something?"

"You guys are having fun," Jake mumbled, "I'll just go home."

"Shut up, we stick together," Spud said. "Come on, let's go."

Jake let Spud grab him by the hand and pull him downstairs to the dancers, to where Trixie was waiting. Jake glanced over his shoulder one more time but this was a different rooftop, an empty rooftop, and there was nothing for him. There never had been.

Act II

Jake was better this year, really. Another school year, another homecoming, and Spud and Trixie both agreed that he wasn't nearly as mopey as he had been this time last year. Matter of fact, not only had Jake bought a ticket to the dance but he had even asked a date. Moving up, moving on, all of that stuff. He still didn't put on a suit but he didn't default to the leather jacket that he'd worn to Homecoming last year. Jake put on a perfectly respectable red button-up and a sport coat that he'd taken from the back of his dad's closet. He gelled his hair and tried to really care about tonight. Danika cared and Jake liked Danika. They'd gone back and forth near the end of middle school but they'd lost touch during the summer before high school and that was when Jake's panic attacks had started – or, as Haley phrased it, Jake had moved out of the denial stage.

Jake let his parents take less photos when he went down the stairs. He had a girl to pick up and friends to meet at the dance.

"Aww," his mom said, fussing with his jacket and his hair, "you just look so much more grown up than you did a year ago!"

"Time is a cruel mistress," his dad agreed dramatically and Jake knew he needed to get out of there before either of them, probably his dad, started to cry.

"Love you guys! I'll text you when we leave the dance!"

Jake was only five minutes late in picking Danika up, which was pretty good for him. She was already being posed on her front lawn by her parents when Jake tumbled up the driveway, doing his best not to drop her corsage. His hands were shaking and his lungs were turning into bricks. Jake just smiled as he approached and let out a wolf whistle, which Danika's mother seemed to find charming but just made her father glare. Jake shrugged it off. This was who he was; this was the Jake that everyone seemed to remember. This was the way that he had to be because he was better now. Everyone said so.

"You look beautiful," Jake told Danika, and it definitely wasn't a lie.

Danika had always been pretty but now that they were in their second year of high school, she was turning into a woman. She had found her sense of style and with it came an easy confidence, which exuded out of her as she turned to smile at Jake's compliment. Her dark curls danced in the slight breeze and her orange sundress complimented her tanned skin with its colour and complimented her curves with its shape. Any person would be lucky to be taking Danika to the Homecoming dance and Jake tried to feel that. No, he did feel that. He was lucky to be with Danika who was not only stunning but who skateboarded like he did and snorted when she laughed because she wasn't embarrassed and who fit in with him and his weirdo friends. Jake couldn't have asked for anything else and he wasn't looking at her and thinking of someone else.

He really, really wasn't.

Jake's smile never slipped as they took all of the photos Danika's parents wanted before her dad drove them to the dance. He muttered something about curfews and things that happened to boys who hurt his daughter as they pulled up outside, leaving Danika to hit him in the shoulder with her orange clutch purse and gasp, "Dad!"

"Don't you worry, sir," Jake said, the way that his grandfather would expect of him, "I'm not going to hurt your daughter."

"Better not."

"DAD! We are getting out of the car, now. Love you."

"Call me when you're ready to leave."

Danika rolled her eyes at Jake but called back, "I will, Dad!" like a good daughter.

She looped her arm with Jake's and Jake leant into the warmth of her touch, using it to ground himself. This was a just another school dance. He went to all the themed ones with Trixie and Spud and they had fun. Just because it was the Homecoming dance didn't mean anything. Was Jake losing it or was his breathing getting louder?

"Ooh, I see Trixie and Spud!"

Jake watched Spud's eyes flick over him and clock him immediately. Spud put his elbow into Trixie's ribs until she looked at Jake too.

"You guys look amazing," Danika said.

"You don't have to lie," Trixie said smoothly, "we look ridiculous."

"But we like it like that," Spud countered but he didn't take his eyes from Jake.

Jake shook his head at Spud. They weren't getting into it here and now. Maybe they wouldn't have to get into it at all. He was doing better, everyone said so. Even if he didn't talk about Rose. Even if he still had panic attacks.

"They spent the entire summer planning their outfits," Jake told Danika. "They had to one up last year's."

Jake didn't think they had, personally, but only because they'd gone matching this year in tie-dyed sequined suits.

Danika laughed. "That's a fun tradition. Why did that start?"

"We just wanted to see how bad Jake would laugh when he saw us," Trixie said. "Then it became a game."

The song around them turned slow and Danika grabbed Jake's hand. "Want to dance?"

Jake nodded because there was no reason not to say no. He let himself be led to the dance floor, in the middle of the swell of bodies, close to where Danika's friends were snuggled to their own dates. Jake felt more comfortable in the heat of the crowd and his eyes darted over the couples around them as he fit his arms around her waist and her arms went around his neck. Jake swallowed hard and looked down at her, thinking the last time he had slow danced with a girl that she had been taller than him.

"You went somewhere," Danika observed.

"I didn't, I promise."

Danika squinted at him. "Come on, Jake, don't lie to me. I can take it."

"It's not what you're thinking," Jake assured her as they swayed.

"You don't know me well enough yet to guess at what I'm thinking."

Jake pressed a kiss to her temple and it felt almost natural to do so. He thought of what he could tell her so that she could understand that she wasn't competing with another girl but he didn't want her to feel like he was being haunted by a ghost, either. Jake wasn't haunted. Jake was better. Everyone said so. Even though he was haunted. Haunted by the girl that so few remembered.

"My last girlfriend was, um. Well, she …"

"Bad break-up?"

Jake shook his head. Was it broken up if they were erased? Was it broken up if Rose Hunter as he had loved her had never actually existed? Was it broken up even if they had loved each other to the very last second?

"She died," Jake whispered. "And it's not that I'm not here with you, I'm just trying to figure out how much I can be here with you. Aww, man, that came out wrong. You're awesome. I just don't know if I'm ready. I felt ready when I asked you to this dance. I really did."

"Oh, Jake." Danika ran one hand through his hair and Jake had to admit that her touch felt nice.

"I probably should have told you about that before, huh?"

"No, that's such a hard thing to say. I don't even know what to say back to it."

"Let's just dance," Jake said, "for as long as you want."

"Are you sure?"

"I like you. You're great. So, yeah. Let's just let it be fun. Unless you're against fun," Jake teased.

And it was some sort of fun. Jake had genuine smiles and Danika honestly made him laugh. They danced fast numbers with his friends and hers and he danced most of the slow songs with her, although he reserved a few for Trixie, despite the fact that the sequins on her coat made him itch.

"You have scales," she hissed, "how different can it be?"

"That's it," Jake said dramatically, "I'm never speaking to you again."

"Yeah right, you'll get over it."

"Historically speaking, I don't get over things."

For a second, Trixie looked like she couldn't decide whether to get mad at him or get sad for him. Only a second, because Trixie never chose emotions. That was Spud's job. She whacked him in the shoulder but with some sympathy said, "you're okay."

"Historically speaking, that's always been true too."

Jake felt exhausted by fun by the time that the house lights had turned on. Still, he didn't bail and he didn't go hide. He'd made it through the whole night and he hadn't had a single panic attack and he'd only actually hidden in the bathroom once and it had only been for five minutes! He and his friends were going for burgers after the dance but Danika had to go straight home. Like a gentleman, he waited outside on the curb with her for her father to arrive.

"I had a good night, Jake," Danika said.

"Me too."

This was the part, he knew, where the boy kissed the girl. He looked into Danika's brown eyes and he felt the slightest pull of should I? deep in his gut. It wasn't an I want to and that was enough for him to lean the slightest bit back. Danika's eyes flared in surprise but she softened, quickly.

"We can be friends," she said. "You know, just keep having fun together."

"I'd like that."

Jake opened her car door for her, went for burgers with her friends, and in the days after Homecoming, he never called Danika back.

Act III

"No, absolutely not."

"Come on, man, pretend like you have a personality again."

With a swipe of his dragon's claws, Jake left the top hat in tatters on the ground. "I have a personality but that doesn't mean that I'm joining in on whatever this is that you and Trixie do."

"Have fun," Spud said. "Remember fun?"

"Do not tell me we're getting Goth Jake back!" Trixie shouted from behind her dressing room curtain.

"I was never goth," Jake protested. "I was going through something! I was in, like, mourning or whatever."

"So we can convince you to wear a colour to Homecoming this year?" Spud asked, picking at the edge of Jake's black t-shirt.

Jake swatted him off. "I wore red last year when I went with Danika."

His lungs were getting squished again, even as he sat in his armchair, doing nothing. In a flash, he saw a year ago, placing a corsage on her wrist, not kissing her at the end of the night, not waving at her in the school halls until she and all of her friends eventually started turning the stink eye on him when he walked by any of them. It was fair. He hadn't exactly led Danika on but he wasn't really the type of person that she needed in her life – friend or otherwise and so he'd made the clean break. He probably should have told her that he was doing that but so much of what Jake should do or wanted to do kept getting swallowed inside of the void in his chest.

Jake was better now, really.

"And it clashed!"

"Spud, you look like a Furby!" There, that was personality. "Everyone's going to think you're a furry."

Trixie threw back the dressing room curtain, taking in Spud's outfit. It was definitely fluffy but what it was, Jake wasn't sure. It wasn't a dress but there weren't really pants. The best description Jake had was that Spud was wearing a green carpeted tent. Trixie, on the other hand, had gone feminine in a way that Jake couldn't remember her doing for any school dances in high school. Of course, this was Homecoming where the theme was ridiculousness so hopefully he would laugh and hopefully he would be distracted, because Trixie and Spud loved him. Trixie looked like a steampunk pirate princess.

"There is no way you're getting a fake pistol into a school dance," Jake said.

"Party pooper," said Spud.

"Who says it's fake?" asked Trixie.

Jake groaned.

Trixie agreed to leave the pistol behind if Jake agreed to wear a bowtie in the shape of bowtie pasta. It was an easy agreement because see Spud, I still have personality and then they were posing for pictures in the costume shop's dressing room. Haley had some kind of genius science thing happening tonight so neither of Jake's parents were home to insist he be there to take pictures of him. It was a bit of a relief and a bit of a sadness but Jake just tried to throw himself into really being in the moment with his friends. Jake knew he was bad about being in the moment. He knew that he slipped, often, into the past and into the what ifs and his head turned whenever he saw blonde hair that was even remotely the right shade. It wasn't fair and he had been working on it for the past three years and he was doing better than he had been.

Really. Everyone would agree.

"Let's go!" Spud said. "I heard the football team is spiking the punch."

Trixie rummaged around in her skirts. "I'm sure there's a flask of rum in here somewhere."

Jake laughed.

"Come on, let's go."

Jake's lungs didn't get tight when they walked under the Homecoming banner. His eyes didn't search the crowded room, lit by disco balls and bouncing coloured lights. Someone called Trixie's name the second they walked in so she wandered off, distracted while Jake followed Spud on his mission to the punch bowl. Which, sadly, was just fruit punch.

"But are we too late or too early?" Spud asked the bowl. The bowl didn't answer. "Hey, where'd Trixie go?"

"Someone wanted her," Jake shrugged. "I didn't see who."

Spud snorted. "Since when do we have other friends?"

"We've never needed other friends," Jake said.

"True that."

They clinked their cups of just fruit punch together and downed them like there was actually alcohol in them. Jake had just put his cup down on the edge of the table when Trixie burst through the crowd, nearly throwing Tracey in Lacey. Both of them put their hands on their hips in an almost synchronized movement, their similar mini dresses adding to the effect that they were funhouse mirror images. Jake was sure he was the only one who noticed because Trixie certainly didn't care and Spud was half paying attention to Trixie but his eyes kept wandering toward the punch bowl as if a football player was going to appear with a handle of vodka.

"Jake!" Trixie exclaimed. "Someone wants to dance with you."

"No thank you." Jake had learnt his lesson last Homecoming. He'd messed things up with Danika and he didn't want to do that to anyone else. He needed to squish this void inside of himself and be better, really properly better, before he even tried to dance with anyone again.

Well, anyone that wasn't Trixie and Spud. Anyone that didn't understand the loss and the panic attacks and the way that Jake skipped school around Valentine's Day when students were sending roses back and forth to each other in class. When Jake was better and not just better in the way that he had improved.

"Jake, come on. She's –"

"Trixie, I'm going to dance with you."

Trixie put her palm against his chest, even as Jake reached for her. Jake had known Trixie most of his life but there was a look on her face that he couldn't identify. She met his gaze, her eyes black under the strobe lights.

"It's the new Chinese exchange student Courtney's family is housing. She really thinks you're cute, Jake. You should try."

"I tried with Danika and I hurt someone I didn't have to," Jake pointed out, feeling mature. "So, no, I'm going to dance with you and with Spud and that's it."

"Do this and I won't ask again. Not this year and not next when it's our last Homecoming. It'll be just us, I promise, if you dance one time with the exchange student."

Jake savoured the thought of a last Homecoming for a second. His yearly torture would be well and truly over but so would his yearly reminder. Jake snorted. As if his beating heart wasn't a reminder of everything that had been lost.

"For me, Jake. Dance with her for me."

"Since we do you even know Courtney?" Jake forced out, tripping over Courtney's name. Courtney had been Rose's best friend, another life ago, another person ago. Jake tried not to look at Courtney in classes or when they passed each other in the halls. He didn't want to know who her best friend was now. He didn't need the confirmation of how much had changed.

"Jake."

"Fine."

It wasn't like Trixie to be this kind of insistent or this kind of vague. It really troubled Jake that he couldn't pin down what was going on in her head. They were best friends. Trixie and Spud were supposed to be the same kind of open books to him that he was to them. They were a team and teams didn't have secrets that made Trixie's brow crease the way that it was right now.

"Come on, Spud, you're going to dance with me."

Trixie towed the three of them through the crowd to where Courtney and her friends had taken up residence around a table covered in purses. Courtney smiled at the sight of him and reached out to grasp his wrist.

"Thanks for saying yes! She just arrived yesterday and she saw you at the dance and was like 'omg, who's that guy!'."

"No problem," Jake muttered, trying to shake Courtney's hand off.

"Rose!" she shouted over the music, "ROSE!"

Not even bricks on his lungs, this time. His lungs had turned into concrete, his stomach was falling out, his world was spinning. Jake wasn't dancing with a woman named Rose. Was that why Trixie had looked like that? Was this like the first Homecoming and this was some misguided attempt to heal him? Jake stopped trying to fight Courtney because he couldn't figure out breathing or moving or thought. Rose, Rose, Rose. His Rose Hunter, frozen at fourteen, embedded in him in a more permanent way than a tattoo or a scar. Rose.

"Jake!" Courtney said happily, unaware of his inner turmoil. "This is Rose Dawson."

Jake found enough strength to move, turning his head to see if Trixie was in reach to rescue him. Instead, he found himself staring into blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. The same blue that he dreamt of, that haunted him, that turned his lungs into bricks. The blue eyes he'd said goodbye to a thousand times since actually letting her go. Jake stumbled backward a step, more of the girl coming into view. Lean, muscular, but not because she was a killing machine anymore. Rose Dawson sported long blonde hair – curled for the occasion – and a pink gown with gold details. She was wearing heels but Jake was taller than her. Jake was taller than her now.

"Dawson?" Jake squeaked.

"Yes, Rose Dawson," Courtney said, hugging his shoulders and then shoving him closer. "Rose, this is Jake Long! He's so cool!"

Cool? Since when?

"Nice to meet you," Rose said diplomatically, her pink lips curling into a smile.

Meet him?

Jake felt his body turn to ice. Why would she ask for him if she didn't know him? Did she feel a pull or was it coincidence or was there really nothing? Jake closed his eyes for the briefest second, letting the bass pound over him and distract him. He decided he would open his eyes with new clarity, because it didn't matter. She was here and this was another chance and there was no clearer sign from the universe that they were written in the stars, they were fate, they had the red string that so many people spent their lives searching for. Jake opened his eyes and, incredibly, she was still there. He wanted to pinch himself to make sure he was actually seeing her but he didn't want her to think him weird. If she truly didn't know him, if his was just the face that she had picked out across a crowded room, he wanted to at least attempt to be cool. Or, at least, not a total loser who was on the verge of having a panic attack at seeing her because that was not normal teenaged boy behaviour.

The song changed to something slower. Jake held out his hand and Rose was gracious enough to ignore how much it was trembling. She led the way to the floor, not in the thick of bodies were Trixie and Spud were making spectacles of themselves, but to the edge, where it was quieter, where they could hear one another. Jake swallowed hard and placed his hands on her waist. It was like he had never let go of her. Her body still fit against his own, like it was meant to. Her arms went around his neck and Jake felt something in him – deep in him, maybe all the way to the depths of the void in his chest – actually, fully relax.

"I don't know this song very well," Rose said, cocking her head toward the DJ booth.

"Me either." Jake was trying to think of what song had been playing the last time they had danced.

"You feel tense," Rose observed.

The conversation was stilted, strange, and Jake didn't know how to fix it. He didn't know how to do anything but stare at her, scared that he was finally, fully losing his mind and that if he did something wrong, he'd wake up and realize that she had never been here at all.

Jake opened his mouth, hoping for something meaningful or interesting or worthwhile to come out. "You're beautiful," soft, whispered, so low that Jake wondered if she would even hear it.

Rose did and she lit up. Jake couldn't figure out what part of her to look at – the blush on her cheeks, the way that she was smiling, or her eyes, so deep and so focused on looking back at him that he didn't know how to think anymore. No, Jake definitely couldn't look at her eyes. He looked at her lips but then all he could think about was kissing her and then he worried that she was thinking that was all that he was thinking about so he looked to her cheek, following the line of her cheekbone and getting distracted by the little diamond studs in her earlobes.

"You're … different," Rose said, the word causing them both to pause.

Jake leant away from her, grasping her by the elbows to hold her in one spot, rather than the swaying back and forth that they'd been calling dancing.

"Different?"

Rose looked down at their shoes. "Can we go somewhere, maybe? I don't want to sound crazy."

Jake nodded and then he took her hand, actually threading his fingers through hers so that he could keep a tight hold on her, like she would disappear if he didn't. Rose was hanging onto him back, with a strength that made Jake think that there was more to her grasp. She wasn't just following him; she was holding onto him back. Jake took them to the roof, using a subtle dragon's claw to let them out onto the restricted area. He didn't know what she knew and he didn't want to scare her. Because maybe Rose Dawson got scared in a way that Rose Hunter never had the luxury of being.

Rose took in a deep breath and looked up at the stars. "I missed this city."

"Courtney said you were an exchange student," Jake said, because that was a good place to start.

"My family moved to China," Rose said, wandering the rooftop. Jake was hot on her heels. If anything happened, he was going to grab her in his arms and never actually let go this time. Her dress was long enough that it touched the ground, the fabric making the slightest rustling sound. Jake took great care not to step on it; he didn't want to be the thing that happened to her. Not this time. "At the beginning of high school. I hated it. This city is home. New York is my home. So, I applied to be an exchange student. Which was 'cheating'. Then, I took the idea to NYU, wrote a bunch of hypotheses and papers and put in a lot of ideas that could apply to several departments and now I'm here."

"At NYU?" Jake wasn't following.

"No, not until September. Well, assuming that this dissertation goes well and I can talk about the cultural aspects and social aspects etc of going back and forth from being a New York native to a transfer student in China to an exchange student back in New York." Rose spun around to face Jake and he nearly ran into her. "That's not what you want to ask me about."

"Why'd you want to dance with me?"

Rose tilted her head, looking genuinely confused. "I don't know."

Jake was being crushed.

"Well, I just don't want you to think I've lost it."

"You already said that you don't want me to think you're crazy," Jake said, "so what if I promise not to? Would you believe me?"

Rose reached down and took Jake's hand in her own, their fingers twining together in a way that Jake could only think of as natural.

"I don't know who you are. I didn't know what your name was until Courtney said it. But, I knew you the moment I saw you. I knew you even though you're …" Rose waved her hand in the air, trying to summon a word.

"Different?" Jake supplied. The word from the dance floor. The word that gave him hope. Jake had nearly forgotten hope.

"My whole life, I dreamt of a boy in a suit. Not, like, the way that people do when they're thinking about who they might fall in love with later or picturing the ideal person. The same boy, in the same suit. It started to feel a little ridiculous, honestly, the older I got, because he was always just fourteen." Then, Rose laughed. "Just fourteen! Like seventeen is old."

Jake swallowed the lump in his throat and forced out the question: "Who was the boy?"

"It was you."

It was you.

"But I don't know why."

Jake squeezed her hand. "Let's dance. Let me show you."

"The boy sings me a song," Rose informed him, "while we dance?"

Jake remembered dancing with her, he remembered whispering the lyrics in her ear – even though it was more just an excuse to kiss her neck, tickle her in the way that made her giggle in his favourite way. Jake pulled Rose into his arms.

"Start us off."

Rose hummed a few bars and then song flooded into Jake. Of course. How strange that the song, of all things, had been lost to memory and then brought back immediately. Rose was looking at him now with some familiarity, like he was only half a stranger. Jake didn't know if he had it in him to tell her everything because, well, that had been the whole point of giving her up. But, Jake also knew that he was not going to be giving her up again. He could see the red thread around their fingers, as if it were really there. And, maybe it was. Who knew what kind of magic there was in the world? There was only a small sliver of it in New York. Enough of a sliver, to bring Rose here, to put her back in his arms.

"Sing, Jake."

She sounded exactly like his Rose and Jake opened his mouth, letting the chorus of the song that she'd been humming free to the night air:

"If this was our last dance

I'd wait in the rain

Just to see your face

If this was our last chance

I'd ask you to stay

For one last dance."

"I don't think it's the last dance."

Jake's heart stopped and then, embarrassingly, he felt himself fighting not to cry.

"I know you, don't I?"

"There's so much you need to know. You don't want to know. I don't know how to tell you. I –"

Jake's throat was closing and his heart was stopping and the bricks were back in his lungs. As much as he tried to look at Rose's face, try and find that calm that had flooded him when they were dancing, it had completely fled into the void that had reopened inside of him. He knew that she wasn't crazy but what if she thought he was? What if this wasn't fair? What if –

"Jake?"

"Rose." Her name in his mouth again was a sweet treat, like the first drink of water in a drought, like the universe was knitting itself back together.

"This is the part where you tell me I'm not crazy and then it doesn't matter what I do or don't know or will or won't learn or any of it because, maybe, we can figure it out together." Rose glanced away from him, over her shoulder to look at the skyline. Jake could see the blush rising on her cheeks and he didn't want her to be embarrassed. "I don't know you but I feel like I do and if you don't think I'm crazy, then, I think it would be nice to figure it out together."

Jake's hand left her waist to skim up her arm and then to cup her jaw in his hand. She leant into him, peeking up at him in a way that he would have to get used to, because he was taller than Rose now. Nothing was static and they had both grown and maybe they could grow together.

"I don't think you're crazy," Jake said, "but would you think I was if I asked to kiss you?"

"I was hoping you'd ask, from the moment I saw you," Rose admitted and this time, there was no blush, no trace of embarrassment at all.

Jake didn't waste another second on banter. He pulled her flush to him, sliding one hand up her back and the other to her side. He braced her against his arm and leant her into a long, slow dip. Jake drew her into a movie kiss and Rose sighed in satisfaction in the moment before their lips even met. Jake had meant to take his kiss dramatically slow, give her time to make sure that she really wanted to be kissing him and give himself time to let the world right itself underneath of him. Good intentions but their moment their lips touched was like stars colliding. Jake felt the entire universe shift as Rose arched into him, one hand anchoring the back of his head to her, the other arm thrown around his shoulders as if Jake could ever, possibly, even think of going anywhere that wasn't with her ever again. Jake kissed her breathless, until their knees went weak and he was on his knees on the rooftop, Rose half cuddled onto his thighs, half on the roof itself. She let out a little giggle – his favourite giggle – and Jake melted into her, wanting to hold her forever.

Rose ran his fingers through his hair and Jake leant into both the fact that she felt familiar and she was treating him familiarly.

"You should put the green back in," Rose commented.

"Hmm?"

"My dream boy is more colourful."

"Maybe your dream boy grew up."

Rose placed her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. "Yes, of course he did, but that doesn't mean he's not still my dream boy."

Jake kissed her again. "Want to go back downstairs? We still have time for one last dance."

"Jake," Rose said as he helped her up, "I don't think we have a last dance."

Jake agreed as they rejoined their classmates for the last slow song of the night. He could feel Spud and Trixie staring at him but there would be more than enough time for them and explanations tomorrow. Tonight, Jake rested his head against Rose, burying his nose in her curls, feeling the fact that she was really, honestly, truly here.

"Jake?"

"Hm," Jake said into her ear. He didn't want to lift his head. He didn't want anything other than this – the dance they got to finish, the right way.

"Is it crazy if I ask you to be my boyfriend right now?"

"No." Jake tightened his grip on her. "Is it crazy to say I've always been yours anyway?"

"No."

With that, Jake kissed her again, kissed her until the house lights came up and the chaperones forced them apart.

Act IV

"Oh, I get it," Jake heard his father say, "like a red, red, rose!"

"Or, Jon," there went his mother, "maybe Rose just looks good in red. Plus, what are Trixie and Spud?"

"Gorgeous," came Rose's voice. "I think they're gorgeous."

Jake hurried to pull on his suit jacket, trying not to mess up his tie. His friends and his girlfriend were early and Jake was … actually, pretty ready. Jake was actually ready for Homecoming this year. Jake was embracing the last Homecoming of his high school career because this was the year that he was actually doing things right. There would no bricks on his lungs, no voids to consume him, no worries about hurting someone he didn't have to.

Not that the last year had been easy.

Rose was the unstoppable force of nature that she had always been but they were different people. Rose had forced Jake to confront that in a way that Jake had never fully felt ready for and so he'd actually gone to therapy. He had actually gone and gotten himself better, in a push pull kind of way that Jake knew would never end, but he was actually, finally doing better. And Rose? She'd strung together enough memories and asked specific enough questions that she had gotten a satisfactory answer to who she used to be without all of the specifics. Jake thought that he would have been driven crazy, not knowing the whole story, but Rose shrugged it off with a "well, let's fall in love again. Besides, when I have questions, you'll answer". Memories came back to her few and far between but now that she was officially living in New York again, bunked up at NYU with her demonic roommate Stephanie, she tended to get triggered more often.

"Jakey!"

Jake pounded down the stairs, emerging into the living room. Spud was wearing traffic cone chic over knee high converse, while Trixie was wearing a leopard print skirt with a zebra print top and a cow print cape.

"The whole zoo?" Jake joked.

"Now that I've got my monkeys," Trixie shot back, throwing an arm around Jake's neck and Spud's neck and pulling them into her.

Jake heard the familiar click of his father's ancient camera.

"Aww, what a good shot!"

"If they're the monkeys, what am I?" Rose asked.

"Stunning," Jake said, turning to face her and drinking her in for the first time.

Rose was wearing a shining red dress, a slit going up the side of her leg just far enough that all Jake could think about was the fact that she was a university student in a dorm room and as demonic as Stephenie was, she tended not to come home on Friday nights. As if reading his mind, Jake felt his mom's hand on his shoulder.

"You have a curfew," she reminded him in a low voice.

Wary of his father, Jake murmured back, "dragon emergency."

"I'll have Gramps go with you."

"Mother, I am eighteen."

That was loud enough that Jake felt the eyes flicker to him but he didn't feel a trace of embarrassment. He reached out for Rose and tucked her under his arm, turning to face his father. His dad lit up with the joy and started combining Jake and Rose then Spud and Jake then Trixie and Rose then Trixie and Jake and wait, how about a whole group shot? Jake had all the patience in the world for his father because this was the last time – the relief, the tinge of sadness, the remembrance of bricks on his lungs at the thought of the last time! – that this was going to happen. At least like this. At least for him. Jake's patience did not extend all the way to his friends, though and before he knew it, Spud and Trixie were saying goodbyes on behalf of all of them.

"Mr. L, come on! We gotta actually make the dance!"

"We can't miss the best songs!"

They'd splurged for their last dance and there was a town car waiting to pick them up. They couldn't quite afford a limo and what would be the point if they couldn't have the mini bar? Still, Jake felt adult as he held the door open for Rose and let her inside, playfully shutting the door in Trixie's face. She rolled her eyes and then yanked it open, going into a deep bow to usher Spud inside the car with them. So deep, in fact, that Jake was wondering if she was going to make it into the dance with the skirt that she was currently wearing. She made it into the car without flashing Jake's parents or the neighbours and Jake decided not to care if they made it to the dance or not. Even though he was healing now, actually healing, Jake knew that he had lost the guy that wanted to breakdance in the middle of a crowd, who wanted to be in the middle of the social scene, who wanted anything beyond what he had here, in this car. Jake would have been happy to pull over to the side of the road, blast the car speaker and have the four of them all night. But, that was not what he had signed up for and there were no bricks on his lungs this year.

Jake pulled Rose across the bench seat and cuddled her into him. His Rose. In every life, in every way that mattered, they belonged to each other.

"Can we save the mush for when it's diluted?" Trixie complained immediately but that just made Jake actually kiss Rose rather than just snuggle her.

Rose laughed and reached for his lip. "This is not your colour."

Jake kissed her again.

"Where's the spray bottle when you need it?" Spud joked.

Rose playfully hissed at him like a cat and Jake just leant into her, reveling in the comfort until they piled out of the town car and were in the thick of Homecoming. There was a celebratory air as the senior class was realizing that this was the last time without fully feeling the sadness of the last time. Jake didn't feel any of that. Following his clown dressed friends into the obnoxiously decorated hall, Jake actually felt like it was the first time.

He forgot about rooftops. He forgot about loss. He laughed at Spud's disappointment that they were too early or too late for the rum punch and had to settle for just fruit punch. He loved that they could all dance as a group to the fast songs – Trixie and Rose winning the evening with a dramatic, flamboyant tango set to Taylor Swift's latest, though he and Spud tried very hard to square dance to a rap song. Jake loved that he could actually laugh in the way that he felt his sides were going to split and that it wasn't just a fleeting moment of happiness, that this was the kind of happiness here to stay.

What Jake loved most, though, was when the song slowed.

"I put this one on request," Rose admitted.

Jake was so glad she had and he kissed her again, not caring if her lipstick was his colour or not. Rose was his colour.

"The university Homecoming looks a little different than this," Rose said, "but I don't feel sorry I'm missing it."

"We'll go next year," Jake said with confidence.

"Oh, will we?"

Jake knew that she was teasing. He knew that look in her blue eyes. He clocked the flick of her lips as she struggled not to smile about it.

"Yes, we will."

"If this was our last dance

I'd wait in the rain

Just to see your face

If this was our last chance

I'd ask you to stay

For one last dance."

The chorus broke between them and for a moment, they just swayed softly in time to the music, Rose's hands around Jake's neck, and Jake holding her hips. Jake took his time in looking at her, unlike last year. This year, they were comfortable in their silence, comfortable in the way that they looked at each other. Not just comfortable, confident. And confident ate his void, every time, now that she was looking back at him.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Rose asked.

"Any time."

Rose leant up on her tiptoes and Jake folded her body against him, taking a beat to appreciate that she was really here, really in his arms, because he could never let himself take her for granted. Rose's lips brushed his ear.

"I don't think this is our last dance."

Jake put his lips to her ear but he mainly kissed along her neck, tickled the spot under her ear that made her giggle in his favourite way.

"I don't think it is either," Jake whispered and he felt the little shiver his voice gave her.

"So, when's the next one?"

Five minutes from now on this dance floor; five hours from now, in her dorm room; five years from now at their wedding. It didn't matter. They had options, choices. They had everything, because they were they again.

"I don't know." Jake kissed along the other side of her neck. "Secret?"

"I love a secret," Rose said throatily.

"I love you."

That wasn't a secret at all but Jake loved the way it made her run hand through his hair.

"Secret," Rose replied, "I love you too."

That wasn't a secret either but Jake responded like she had given him the greatest gift in the world because, honestly, she had.